If you don’t know, now you know

Most people don’t understand rap. I am not going to pretend I understand it all the time. Nevertheless, I believe it was my father (+Ben Mueller) who said “Lil Wayne is the modern-day Bob Dylan.” He meant that rappers are modern-day poets, in the same way Bob Dylan was a musician-poet for his generation. In fact, deciphering Dylan’s lyrics have been the subject of at least one university course.

While we don’t yet have college courses dissecting the lyrics of +Snoop Dogg, Rap Genius fills in the void and goes to task to “critique rap as poetry.” They even give a sensible explication for Kanye West’s “‘Ello, ‘ello, ‘ello, hello” from the beginning of his verse on Gotta Have It:

Also worthwhile taking a look at their Rap Map, obviously the geography behind rap lyrics.